It's one of those films which makes you feel a bit guilty if you enjoy it. To which Nero simply replies, "I know." For the curious, "Django" is a Romany (Gypsy) name meaning "I awake".
Paradoxically it is also quite funny in places and features some inspired acting from Christoph Waltz in the bizarre role of a German dentist and bounty hunter.Ī nice touch is that 46 years after his original performance, Nero, now 71, has a cameo role in which the black Django of this film (Jamie Foxx) explains to him that when pronouncing his name, "the 'D' is silent". Being a Quentin Tarantino film, it will come as no surprise that it is extremely violent, and when you leave the cinema you might find yourself checking your clothes for any blood-spatter that escaped from the screen. What prompted these thoughts was a visit to the cinema a couple of nights ago to see Django Unchained. Anyway, it was preferable to being called farang kee nok (cheapskate foreigner), hua lan (baldy) or puhm poey (fatso). So, any foreigner who strayed off the beaten track in Thailand in those days and perhaps, like me, looked a bit dishevelled, became an obvious target for the "Django" appellation. However, unlike nudity, violence has never bothered the Thai censors and Django became a cult hit, even in Nakhon Nowhere. In Britain, the film was regarded as too violent and was banned until 1993. One of the early "spaghetti westerns", it starred Italian actor Franco Nero in the title role as a drifter-cum-gunslinger who for some reason dragged a coffin around with him.
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I later discovered that the previous year there had been a hugely popular movie in Thailand called Django. The only Django I was aware of was the French jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt, who had died back in 1953, and it seemed most unlikely he would be known to kids sitting on a buffalo in rural Thailand. This was usually followed by lots of giggling as they scampered away through the paddy fields, fleeing this big-nosed, blotchy, sweating stranger trudging through their territory.
During my early days in Thailand, while wandering around in rural areas, I was regularly subjected to the cry of "Django!" from the kids.